The difference between humans and chimpanzees is purely one of imitation. Humans have evolved to sustain cultural evolution, by imitating existing culture and expanding upon it during a lifetime. Chimpanzees don’t imitate reliably enough to sustain this process and so their individual knowledge gains are mostly lost at death, but the individual intelligence of a human and a chimpanzee is virtually the same. A feral human child, that is, a human without human culture, does not behave more intelligently than a chimpanzee.
The slow accumulation of culture is what separated humans from chimpanzees. For AI to be to humans what humans are to chimps is not really possible because you either accumulate culture (knowledge) or you don’t. The only remaining distinction is one of speed. AI could accumulate a culture of its own, faster than humans. But how fast?
The difference between humans and chimpanzees is purely one of imitation. Humans have evolved to sustain cultural evolution, by imitating existing culture and expanding upon it during a lifetime. Chimpanzees don’t imitate reliably enough to sustain this process and so their individual knowledge gains are mostly lost at death, but the individual intelligence of a human and a chimpanzee is virtually the same. A feral human child, that is, a human without human culture, does not behave more intelligently than a chimpanzee.
The slow accumulation of culture is what separated humans from chimpanzees. For AI to be to humans what humans are to chimps is not really possible because you either accumulate culture (knowledge) or you don’t. The only remaining distinction is one of speed. AI could accumulate a culture of its own, faster than humans. But how fast?